Woody Herman Band Attracts 500 Fans To Souderton Show

Since thirty-odd years ago when he was a student at Pennsylvania State University, Richard Blank has been a fan of Woody Herman.

The Souderton man reminisced about college days - when he and his Sigma Chi fraternity brothers would alternately sob and swing to the emotive tunes of the Big Band sound.

"I remember one album . . . he had songs "Taste of Honey," "Northwest Passage" and "Caldonia," " he said, smiling at the recollection.

Five hundred other smiling and enthusiastic fans of the Big Band era joined Blank in the Souderton High School auditorium last night to hear Woody Herman and his Young Thundering Herd rumble through the nostalgia present in most everyone's heart.

It's been 50 years since the artist, sometimes known as "Father Time," first blew a professional note from his clarinet. But the seasoned musician showed last night that although his dance step may have slowed, he still knows how to make a clarinet wail.

Herman and his 15-piece herd opened the two-hour show with his theme song, "Blue Flame," featuring a short taste of the sassy sound that has kept the band in demand since the 1930s. So enthralled with the sound infrequently heard in the Upper Bucks area, the audience responded with a standing ovation.

The mere mention of the the smokey, sentimental song, "What's New," drew a gush of "aaaahs" from the crowd.

And the evening built from there.

Legs and toes in the audience kept pace with "Four Brothers," featuring four members of the band's saxophone section before slowing for gentle 1948 number "Early Autumn."

Toward the end of the first set, he set the room afire with a rendition of "Woodchoppers Ball," and again tempered the pace with the soft sound of "I Got It Bad, And That Ain't Good."

Louis Kraiss of Souderton summed the sentiments of many of those on hand - many who had grown up with Big Band only for it to become inaccessible because of a lack of local venues.